12 September 2016

Father and Daughter Act

If
I had to choose a few adjectives with which to describe my life, it might be
these: fortunate…blessed…lucky…providential.
It’s not that I haven’t had a few set-backs and trials along the way—I
wouldn’t be human if that weren’t true, but I have a lot to be grateful for—I
have Bridgid… my daughter.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for her siblings, too: older sister, Tanya, and younger
brother, Julian. But, Bridgid and I,
over the years, have forged a writing
connection. I’ve shared a reading connection with all of them, but
Bridgid evolved into a writer and that, as the Wizard says, “Is a horse of a
different color.”

In order to properly train her for her chosen profession I’ve required that she
read and edit nearly everything I’ve written over the past decade. This was not done, as some may suspect,
because I am one of the cheapest SOB’s on the planet, but in order to provide
depth to her appreciation of fine literature (mine) and round out her college
education. The fact that her editorial
eye virtually removed the element of chance in my story acceptance ratio is
neither here nor there. I would have
done her this fatherly kindness in any event.
Plus, I did pay for that education.
Now she’s gone and penned a novella.

No, it’s not crime fiction like her old man
pens, but it does contain intrigue, shady characters, and betrayal. Something we can all relate to. My daughter’s story is set in a world in
which the border between reality and myth blurs and no one you meet is exactly
whom they may appear to be. It’s
fast-moving, readable, and features a very sympathetic heroine. As to how it came about, well, that’s a story
I’ll leave for Bridgid to tell, as it’s as unique as the book she’s written. Oh, by the way, I finally returned the favor
by helping to edit this, her first published work.

I also want to thank mighty Leigh Lundin for
suggesting this post in the first place.
Thanks, Leigh!

The idea behind The Girl in the Forest was born of a rather unfortunate
event. In August of 2011, shortly after
we were married, my husband and I had a tree fall on our house. Not a limb, and not a small tree, but a
massive oak.

We were at a dinner party
at my in-laws when it happened; when we drove around the corner and saw our
little hundred year old house, half smushed, my Volvo buckled under a thousand
pounds of oak, I could only laugh. A
crazed, reality-is-standing-on-its-head kind of laugh.

My husband went inside and found the house full of gas. We waited in the back yard for the fire department to arrive, our cat Zelda looking from us, to the tree, to the house, as though asking, "Do you see this?"

After the fire department turned off the gas connection my husband drove us back to
his parents' house. We spent the next
ten weeks living in their guest room before we acknowledged that this process
was going to take a really long time, and we'd better rent something. In the end it was almost a year before our
house was fixed and we were able to return home.

smushed

Those first two months were incredibly stressful, but things began to look up when we
found our rental, the little cottage in the woods. We'd never lived outside of town before- we
loved it!

Our landlord had a grand old
home on what felt like hundreds of acres, with three rental cottages on the
property. Ours was a five hundred square
foot cottage surrounded by trees. It had
a green metal roof, wisteria climbing the porch railings, and was so small as
to be almost one room. We slept in a
loft that looked out over the great room and the huge wood stove. As night fell you could sit on the porch and
watch the sun set over the Blue Ridge Mountains, linger while the stars came
out, then hurry inside when the coyotes started to howl.

The combination of natural beauty, isolation-
and even something about the self-contained quality of a house that small- had
me, before long, thinking about fairy tales.
In so many of them, there is something magical about the cottage in the
woods. I suddenly felt I was
experiencing a bit of this first hand.
Inspired by the surroundings, (and with the peace and quiet to really
think!) I began to write the first draft of “The Girl in the Forest.”

This novella is a modern retelling of the Hansel and Gretel story, set it in a town
not unlike Charlottesville, VA, where I currently live. The protagonist, Jolie, is new to the town,
having moved there after her mother's death.
She feels alienated and lonely, friendless at a crappy job, with only a
cat for company. The recurring
nightmares keep her from sleeping well, and she eventually gets fired
from her job. At a bookstore she meets
Jamie, a strange man with a past who secures her a job at his friend, Greta's,
bakery. As Jolie starts to learn the
ropes at this new job, the questions stack up quickly: What are Jamie and Greta
planning? Who is Greta running from? And what is the creature that Jolie sees
in her dream each night? And, perhaps
most puzzling, why is Jolie the only one who can see the cottage in the
woods?

It was not until I'd finished writing the fourth draft and handed it to my dad
that I realized I'd written something of a Fantasy/Mystery crossover. You might think, after editing so many of my
dad's stories, that a fact like this would not sneak up on me. Yet somehow it did, in the same way, I hope,
that the inevitable conclusion to my story will sneak up on the unsuspecting
readers. Like a coyote, or a wolf, or
some other hungry creature, waiting in the shadows of the forest.

Thank you to Leigh Lundin and the
SleuthSayers audience for the opportunity to tell my story-it's been a
privilege!

Leigh sort of said what I was going to say, the acorn doesn't fall far from the tree. Welcome back, David. And your novel sounds intriguing, Bridgid. Much luck and success with it! And luckily you and your husband weren't home when that tree fell, now that's magic.

Congratulations, Bridgid! You've certainly had a stellar apprenticeship (David, just read your latest EQMM story over the weekend, btw). Best wishes with the new book--sounds fascinating! (...though the picture of car... wow. The sacrifices we make, planned or not, for our art....)

My thanks to all, as well. R.T. it's always good to be seen in print! Art, I hope you liked my latest and thanks for reading it. Congrats on your newsletter debut! It's great. Paul, you're absolutely right about Bridgid and her husband being lucky. If you could've see that house...

We were lucky in more ways than one! We'd been a bit starry eyed when we bought our fixer upper. Having a tree fall on it (and the insurance company pay for a contractor to work on it) was probably the best thing that ever happened to that house. Naturally, once it was all fixed up, we sold it and moved out to the country. Not quite a cottage in the woods, but pretty close:)

David and Bridgid, I understand that special ties that form when both parent and child write. When I was growing up, my English professor father wrote novels on the side, and I wrote lots of stories; we loved sharing and discussing them. And now both of my daughters write--one writes songs, and the other writes novels. We're constantly passing drafts around and offering each other suggestions. We've always been close, but this has brought us closer. (I should say that my husband writes, too, but his writing is more academic.) Bridgid, I think one of my daughters, especially, would love your novella--I'm going to send her the link for this post. Congratulations, and best of luck!

Isn't it great, B.K.! It's often so difficult for parents and their children to connect, but both reading and writing provide such a wonderful bridge between generations. Like I said earlier--I've been blessed. Sounds like you have, too.